Ryan Shane Owen Invites You On An Electro-Classical-Folk Odyssey With His New Wintersong Album
After spending the last 20-plus years focused on electronic music production and songwriting with an emphasis on dance music, independent Canadian musician Ryan Shane Owen revisits his roots in classical and traditional music with his new album, Wintersong.
Ryan turned his electronic production skills towards music from the 15th to the 19th century, adding percussion and beats to bring a modern interpretation to the multilingual album. He sings in 7 different languages on Wintersong: English, Welsh, French, Italian, German, Norwegian, and Finnish. Ethereal, atmospheric, cinematic, gothic, moody, romantic, and mystical, the album explores old territory with a fresh twist.
The album Wintersong opens with “Early One Morning”, a traditional English folk song that many Canadians will associate with the beloved Bob Homme, also known as The Friendly Giant, host of the magical children’s TV show that ran from 1958 to 1985 on the CBC. Ryan wanted to imbue the track with a feeling of standing on a steep alpine mountainside, hearing the song of the maiden “in the valley below”.
Ryan then presents a pair of folk songs in the enigmatic language of Wales, with the spacious “Ar Lan Y Mor” (Beside The Sea) and “Myfanwy” (pronounced Mu-van-oy, a Welsh female name) known by many as “the greatest love song ever written”. The song tells of a poor poet’s unrequited love for a beautiful noblewoman. Ryan brings a folk-country touch to the famous Welsh ballad.
Moving on to one of Franz Schubert’s most famous pieces, “Ständchen (Serenade in German), this “Lied” (poetry set to music) from 1826 is just as popular in classical music as an instrumental, commonly performed on piano or string instruments. It was written to a poem by Ludwig Rellstab. It is referred to by many as “Schwanengesang” (Swan Song), but that is actually the title of the collection of 14 songs which it is from.
Ryan then moves on to two French pieces, “Belle Ô Nuit, O Nuit d’Amour”, popularly known as “Barcarolle” from the opera The Tales Of Hoffman (1881) by Jaques Offenbach. The dreamy waltz tells of a beautiful night of love, while the classic “Plaisir d’Amour” laments that “the pleasure of love lasts a moment, but the pain of love lasts a lifetime”. The song dates all the way back to 1784, and has been recorded by countless classical and contemporary musicians from Joan Baez and Nana Mouskouri to Marianne Faithfull and Nick Drake.
Italian is next up on the album, with Ryan’s version of “Lascia Ch’io Pianga” (Let Me Weep) a song dripping with baroque drama and splendor by G. F. Handel from the opera “Rinaldo”, written in 1711. Ryan then moves on to “Caro Mio Ben”(Thou, All My Bliss), a stately Arietta by Tomasso Giordani likely from around the year 1783.
Ryan returns to English with the traditional American folk song “Shenandoah”, which dates back to the fur traders of Canada and the USA, known as “voyageurs”. It references the Missouri River they travelled up and down by canoe in the 1800s. Shenandoah was the name of an Iroquois chief who lived in New York State. It then became a sea shanty sung commonly by sailors and has since been covered by artists from Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan to Bruce Springsteen and Tom Waits.
Next, the Wintersong journey takes us far to the north with “Finlandia” the famous “tone poem” by Jean Sibelius. Originally an instrumental, it has had numerous different lyrics set to its plaintive, haunting melody, the most well-known being the Christian hymn “Be Still, My Soul”. Sibelius wrote the piece in protest against the censorship of the Russian Empire, and thus it had to be performed covertly under various alternate titles. It is considered now by many to be the unofficial national anthem of Finland. Ryan imagines a cinematic interpretation full of wind and ice, with the distant call of a tribal choir and drums ringing across the snowy landscape.
Ryan ventures westward into Scandinavia next, with a Bjork-inspired take on “Solveig’s Song” by the great Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg. The song is from the play Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen, which Grieg wrote the music for, including “In The Hall of the Mountain King”, and “Morning Mood”, some of the most familiar pieces of classical music. Ryan adds a playful touch with some heavier percussion and bass that invokes the mystical, mysterious journey of the play.
The Elfin Knight sneaks up on us next, in one of the historically oldest songs on the album, dating back to the 1600s. Actually the earliest-known version of “Scarborough Fair”(the most modern incarnation made famous by Simon and Garfunkel), the song describes the impossible tasks requested by the suitor/antagonist. Ryan adds an organic rhythmic touch with a drum n’ bass feel to the ominous chant in a world full of elves and fairies.
Ryan brings us his version of the ubiquitous “Greensleeves” next, which dates all the way back to the 1500s and was falsely rumoured to have been written by King Henry the 8th for Anne Boleyn. This was just a myth however, it likely dates to an Elizabethan origin, and its melody was later used for the Christmas carol “What Child Is This?”. Ryan builds the song into a brooding, harpsichord-laden expression of the indignation of spurned love.
Wintersong ends with a buoyant “Loch Lomond”, skipping across the rocky cliffs of the Scottish countryside. Rich with the legends of Celtic culture, it is one of the most familiar melodies of folk music, as “Ye take the high road, and I’ll take the low road, and I’ll be in Scotland before ye” challenges the listener to “meet again” on a journey across time, language and culture.
Welcome back – tell us what’s been going on with you since we last spoke!
I’ve been working on, and have now released my new album ‘Wintersong’. It’s a collection of electronic and vocal interpretations of classical and traditional music. I’ve been programming electronic music for over 20 years now, and after putting out 3 full-length dance albums, (Rhapsody for the Disco, Symphony for the Stereo, and Concerto for the Underground), I’ve shifted into a new direction as I explore music that goes back hundreds of years. I sing in 7 different languages on the album: English, French, Italian, German, Finnish, Norwegian, and Welsh. I’ve added not just percussion, but also atmospheric elements that electronic production can provide in my arrangements of some familiar and some not-so-familiar pieces. From Schubert’s famous Serenade (Ständchen), to the romantic French waltz of Barcarolle, to a drum n’ bass tinged The Elfin Knight, I’ve attempted to mold a cohesive sound that feels modern yet ancient. Electronic production of classical music provides me with the technical accuracy needed as well as the artistic options it offers.
Tell us about the process of recording “Myfanwy”?
Although I’ve learned to sing songs in approximately 10 different languages, learning a song in Welsh was probably the most challenging so far. I’ve had a certain familiarity with languages like French and Italian- at least most people are used to the sound of them, whereas Welsh is so unique, unusual, and relatively uncommon. The song “Myfanwy” (pronounced Mu-van-oy) is known by many as one of the most beautiful love songs ever written, and you will find it on every old vinyl record of the renowned Welsh men’s choirs. I found myself wanting to reinterpret the usual somber tone of the very sad song by adding a bit of a folk-country swing. For the video version, I also added acoustic guitar, but the whole of Wintersong is exclusively electronic/synthesized music, with no acoustic instruments in the recordings, but programmed entirely from scratch, with no sampling whatsoever, with the addition of only my voice.
Classical, electro-folk, pop are all over the album. Where does that mixture come from?
One of the first pieces I ever made when I started learning to program electronic music in the 1990s was an electronic interpretation of one of my favourite classical piano pieces that I played while growing up taking lessons beginning at a young age. It is a concept that has been with me for a very long time, and I felt that the time was right to bring it to fruition. I enjoyed learning songs in various languages as I developed my repertoire of over 400 cover songs from all genres that I’ve been working on over the years. I’ve been focusing on songwriting, and after releasing 44 original songs over just the past 5 years. I felt that I wanted a break from writing, to recharge my batteries, and to really enjoy the process of putting this album together. I didn’t start seriously developing my singing voice until late 2018, so the addition of my vocals to the concept was a previously unexpected facet to the project that I wouldn’t have predicted when I made that instrumental recording so long ago.
What are your plans for the rest of 2023 and into 2024?
I’ve started working on my follow-up album, Summersong which I plan on finishing by the spring of 2024. The companion album, or ‘part two’ to Wintersong, it features more “summery” sounding songs in contrast to the “wintery” feel of ‘part one’. It is still all classical and traditional songs, some hundreds of years old, with a rich history, and I’m excited at the prospect of what it will eventually sound like.
What’s an album by a Canadian artist you have that would surprise people?
Loreena McKennitt’s “The Book Of Secrets” may not be surprising, but it is an album I mentally referenced while creating Wintersong. I have long been into music that combines electronic with acoustic, and the ethereal but earthy nature of her songs, especially “The Mummer’s Dance” I find incredibly beautiful and inspiring.